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There are some big companies out there that you’ve probably never heard of, that know more about you than you can imagine.

They’re called data brokers, and they collect all sorts of information — names, addresses, income, where you go on the Internet and who you connect with online. That information is then sold to other companies. There are few regulations governing these brokers.

Data brokers have been around for a long time, collecting information about your magazine and newspaper subscriptions. They know whether you prefer dogs or cats. From public records they can tell if you drive a Ford or a Subaru or if you’ve declared bankruptcy.

But the Internet upped the ante considerably. Think of all that personal data you share on Facebook, or your online shopping. According to Julie Brill, who recently stepped down as a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, these companies share just about everything.

“It’s what Web pages we visit, where we’re shopping, who we’re interfacing with on social media — all of that information is available to be collected by entities that park themselves on the various websites,” Brill said.

Once these companies collect the information, the data brokers package and sell it — sometimes to other brokers, sometimes to businesses — that then use the information to target ads to consumers. And it’s a lucrative industry. One of the largest brokers, Acxiom, reported over $800 million in revenue last year.

When the FTC studied data brokers two years ago, it found that brokers take the information they gleaned about consumers and use it to put us into categories.

Some of the categories are innocuous — pet owner, or winter sports enthusiast.

But Brill says others were more problematic, like “single mom struggling in an urban setting” or “people who did not speak English and felt more comfortable speaking in Spanish” or “gamblers.”

“And so the concern is not only the fact that these profiles are being created, but how are they being used,” Brill said.

Say, for instance, you do an online search for heart disease or diabetes.

Depending upon the website, that information can go to ad networks and analytics companies. If the contents of that heart disease or diabetes search end up with a data broker, that information could then be added to your digital biography.

“That becomes a part of your profile and others see that and can market to you based on that information,” Brill said.

And there’s little to stop data brokers from using the information they’ve gathered from us in whatever way they please, says Jeff Chester, a privacy advocate and director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

“Because there are no online privacy laws in the United States, there’s no stop sign, there’s no go slow sign, there’s no crossing guard. The message is anything goes,” Chester said.

Like Chester, former FTC Commissioner Brill says legislation is needed to make the industry more transparent.

She says there should be a website where consumers could see what data has been collected about them and correct it or block it from being used. Some individual companies, like Acxiom, do this.

And the industry does have voluntary guidelines to limit how information is used.

Xenia Boone is the vice president for corporate and social responsibility at the Direct Marketing Association, which represents many data brokers. She says companies are not creating “dossiers” about consumers.

Boone says marketing companies and fundraiser organizations “are working with data companies in order to get the right information about potential prospects because they need to go out there, they need the data in order to reach someone.”

A marketing industry website, aboutads.info, lets consumers opt out of having some ads sent to their browsers. Consumers can also block individual ads by clicking on that little triangle in the upper right hand corner of many of them. You can also install an ad blocker and clear the cookies from your browser.

But blocking ads is one thing, keeping your information away from the data brokers is much harder to do.

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Theranos was poised to revolutionize the blood testing industry by using only a few drops of blood in inexpensive tests. But now, federal regulators say they will bar the company’s dynamic founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes from owning or operating a lab for at least two years.

“Last year the government began to scrutinize the company after experts found that the results of the blood tests were inaccurate,” as NPR’s Laura Sydell told our Newscast unit.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a federal regulator, said in a letter made public Friday that it is also revoking certification for the company’s Newark, California laboratory and cancelling the lab’s approval to receive Medicare payments. The sanctions will not take full effect until September and the company can appeal.

The company will also be fined $10,000 for every day it is out of compliance with the regulator’s recommendations on how to run the labs, starting on July 12.

Theranos repeatedly failed to prove it had corrected issues previously identified by the regulator, according to the CMS letter, including a finding of “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.” According to The New York Times, “that apparently referred to erroneous results in a test of blood clotting used for patients who take the blood thinner warfarin.”

Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan, told Laura that while the company can appeal, the likelihood for success is miniscule. “If the technology doesn’t work, there’s nothing. There’s just smoke and mirrors. A lot of hype and nothing,” he said. As for Holmes: “She’s radioactive at this point,” Gordon says. “I mean, she can’t stay at the company.”

Theranos said in a statement that it accepts “full responsibility” and vowed to “work non-stop to resolve the issues identified.” It added that Holmes will continue to lead the company and denied that any patients were harmed by their tests.

Holmes dropped out of Stanford at 19 to found the company, which sought to disrupt the tech industry with cheaper, simpler tests. As Laura reported, “Theranos was valued at 9 billion dollars; it had a contract with Walgreens.” Holmes herself was viewed as a wunderkind and drew comparisons to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Laura said:

“Holmes had a beautiful vision, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, and a board of big names like Henry Kissinger and George P. Schulz. The media had a love fest. Time magazine called Holmes one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She was profiled in Fortune andThe New Yorker.”

But as Laura reported, the Theranos story is now viewed as a cautionary tale, “and questions are being raised about whether applying hardware and software business culture to biotechnology is dangerous.”

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Hillary Clinton spoke in Atlantic City, N.J. Wednesday, calling for more jobs in the city and blasting Donald Trump’s business record in the area.

NPR’s politics team has annotated Clinton’s speech below. Portions we commented on are highlighted, followed by analysis, context and fact check in italics.

The speech follows:

That was really great. Thank you so very much.

I’ll tell you there’s no place like Atlantic City. I mean just think, the history, the boardwalk, saltwater taffy — it’s no wonder that families come back year after year.

And I am so grateful to Marty Rosenberg, a native of Atlantic City, being here today to share his story. I’m also grateful to the thousands of workers, who work here to make this city what it is.

Atlantic City is more than a vacation spot. It’s your livelihoods. It’s how you support your families. Now, this city has its share of big names on big buildings. But you and I know it was built by small businesses and the people who work to make it happen here. As a daughter of a small-business man, whose hard work sent me to college, I have a special place in my heart for the contractors, the craftsmen and the shopkeepers who built this city and keep it going.

Now, it is no secret that Atlantic City has gone through some tough times.

[The city has seen a substantial decline in tourism in recent years. here. — Sarah McCammon]

But the people of A.C. are determined to turn things around. You’ve got a city council and a mayor working hand in hand. And if your governor would start doing his job instead of — instead of following Donald Trump around holding his coat, maybe we could really get New Jersey’s economy moving again.

Now, here in Atlantic City and across America, we’ve got to create more good-paying jobs with good wages. We’ve got to make the economy work for everyone, everywhere, not just those at the top in some places.

And that is just one reason why this election is so important.

And as the people of Atlantic City know better than anyone — Donald Trump cannot do the job for American workers and businesses.

Now let’s just look at this for a minute. Donald Trump says he’s qualified to be president because of his business record. Now, three weeks ago, he said, and I quote, “I’m going to do for the country what I did for my business.”

You know when he says things like that, he’s probably hoping nobody will check up on what he has said. Because what he did for his businesses — and his workers — is nothing to brag about. In fact, it’s shameful. And every single voter in America needs to know about it — so we don’t let him do to our country what he did to his businesses.

Now, that is why I’m here today. We’re standing in front of the old Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel. Donald Trump once predicted, “It will be the biggest hit yet.” Now it’s abandoned. You can just make out the word “TRUMP” where it used to be written in flashy lights. He had the letters taken down a few years ago.

[The letters were taken down in 2014 after Trump successfully sued to remove his name from the casino. — Sarah McCammon]

But his presence remains. And not far from here is the old Trump Marina Hotel Casino. A few years ago, it was sold at a huge loss.

Just down the boardwalk is the Trump Taj Mahal. Donald once called it the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” It filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Things got so bad, the new management canceled workers’ health insurance and pensions. And now those workers are on strike and we should all support them in getting a fair deal.

Now ask yourself: According to the Donald, isn’t he supposed to be some kind of amazing businessman? So it’s fair to ask, since he is applying for a job, what in the world happened here?

Now, his excuse for all this failure is that Atlantic City just went downhill — that it’s not his fault.

But don’t believe it. His businesses were failing long before the rest of the town was struggling.

[The Washington Post built a timeline analyzing Atlantic City’s economic challenges alongside Trump’s business woes and found a complicated relationship between the two. The newspaper found that Trump “took risks in a shaky economy” and ultimately used bankruptcy to avoid personal liability. — Sarah McCammon]

In fact, other businesses here did worse because Donald Trump acted so irresponsibly. He calls himself the “King of Debt,” and he earned that title right here in A.C. His bad decisions hurt the whole city.

And here’s what he did.

He intentionally ran up huge amounts of debt on his companies — hundreds of millions of dollars. He borrowed at high interest rates — even after promising regulators that he wouldn’t. What came next? He defaulted on those loans. Didn’t pay them back. And in the end, he bankrupted his companies — not once, not twice, but four times.

[Trump, like some other Atlantic City casino owners, resorted to bankruptcy for several of his casinos after running up unsustainable levels of debt. — Sarah McCammon]

And here’s what he said about one of those bankruptcies: “I figured,” he said, “it was the bank’s problem, not mine. What the hell did I care?”

I’m guessing many of you have had debt at some point — student loans, mortgages, credit cards. You couldn’t just tell the bank that you didn’t feel like paying, could you?

[Personal and Chapter 11 corporate bankruptcies aren’t entirely comparable, as this 2009 NPR piece explains. Personal bankruptcy often results in discharging debt — it’s a declaration that the filer has nothing left to pay (one aside here: discharging student debt via personal bankruptcy is phenomenally difficult). Chapter 11 bankruptcy, meanwhile, is about restructuring debt but keeping the business going. As many outlets have pointed out, it can be considered a good business decision. However, for example, the Washington Post reported earlier this year that financial experts have questioned whether the Taj Mahal bankruptcy was indeed a “fantastic deal.” — Danielle Kurtzleben]

And here’s an important thing about how Donald Trump operates. He doesn’t default and go bankrupt as a last resort. He does it over and over again on purpose — even though he knows he will leave others empty-handed while he keeps the plane, the helicopter, the penthouse.

He convinced other people that his Atlantic City properties were a great investment, so they would put in their own hard-earned money. But he always rigged it so he got paid, no matter how his companies performed. When this casino collapsed because of how badly he managed it, hundreds of people lost their jobs; shareholders were wiped out; lenders lost money; contractors — many of them small businesses — took heavy losses. And many themselves went bust.

But Donald Trump? He walked away with millions.

[Trump’s response to accusations that he ran his companies into the ground through reckless borrowing has been that he had “great timing” and simply used bankruptcy law to his advantage, as business owners often do. — Sarah McCammon]

And here’s what he says about the whole experience — he actually brags about it: “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time. … The money I took out of there was incredible.”

Think about it — the money he took out of here.

That says everything you need to know about Donald Trump. It’s not about what he can build. It’s about how much he can take.

You know, he did it again just this morning. He went on Twitter and said, “I made a lot of money in Atlantic City and left.” Well, he got rich and got out, and he thinks that’s something to be proud of.

He didn’t just take advantage of investors. He took advantage of working people as well.

Donald Trump has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past 30 years. That’s one every three days, give or take. And today’s Wednesday, so he’s due for another one.

Now here in Atlantic City, you may know about Vera Coking, the widow whose house on Columbia Place — right over there — Donald tried to seize it through eminent domain and turn it into a parking lot for limousines. Thankfully, he lost that fight.

[Here’s the back story on Vera Coking. — Sarah McCammon]

But there were thousands more.

[USA Today found records of more than 3,500 legal filings by Trump and his companies over the past 30 years. — Sarah McCammon]

And many of those lawsuits were filed by ordinary Americans who worked for Donald Trump and never got paid. Painters, waiters, plumbers — people who needed the money they earned, and didn’t get it — not because Donald Trump couldn’t pay, but because he wouldn’t pay. Hundreds of liens have been filed against him by contractors, going back decades. And they all tell the same story: I worked for him, I did my job, he wouldn’t pay me what he owed me. One person after another after another.

We just heard from Marty Rosenberg. His company was called Atlantic Plate Glass. They were hired to do a big job for the Trump Taj Mahal. They worked really hard on it. But at some point, Donald Trump just stopped paying. In the end, he owed Marty’s company nearly half a million dollars for the work they did under the agreement they made. Marty’s business barely survived.

He did the same thing to a kitchen equipment company, a cabinetmaker, a music store owner. He owed $3.9 million to a company that supplied marble for his properties. That business had to shut down, and eventually, the owner had to file for personal bankruptcy: the cost of doing business with Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump doesn’t think going bankrupt is a big deal — but it’s devastating if you’re someone who plays by the rules.

I thought a lot about my dad in the last weeks as I’ve learned more about Donald Trump’s business behavior.

My dad was a small-business man. If his customers had done to him what Trump did to these companies, he wouldn’t have made it, either.

So this is personal for me. And it’s personal for a lot of people.

It’s not ancient history. If he’s elected president, it’s our future and the future of hardworking people across America.

Because I want you to understand [that] what he did here in Atlantic City is exactly what he will do if he wins in November.

Step 1: Give a huge tax cut to millionaires like himself. Step 2: Add trillions to our national debt. Step 3: He suggested we could just default on our national debt — like he defaulted on his business debt.

It is the same scam, over and over again.

And make no mistake — he’s not asking for forgiveness. He’s just hoping we forget.

The people he’s trying to convince to vote for him now are the same people he’s been exploiting for years: working people, small-business people, trying to support their families.

And you know, this seems to be his one move. He makes over-the-top promises, and says if people trust him, put their faith in him — he’ll deliver for them. He’ll make them wildly successful. Then everything falls apart, people get hurt and Donald gets paid.

Remember that, the next time you see him on TV, talking about how America will win big if we elect him president.

Those promises he’s making at his rallies? They’re the same promises he made to his customers at Trump University. Now they’re suing him for fraud.

They’re the same promises he made about another scheme called Trump Institute. The New York Times reports that the lessons it sold for thousands of dollars apiece were plagiarized from somebody else.

They’re the same promises he made to his customers at Trump Condos in Baja California. You should hear these people’s stories. They handed over their savings. Then their calls stopped getting answered. The condos were never built, and they never got their money back.

The Newark Star-Ledger says he — and I quote — “excels at ripping people off.” They wrote — again I quote — “As a result of his narcissistic, destructive risk-taking with other people’s money, his casinos posted huge losses while others thrived.”

[Here is the editorial from the Star-Ledger editorial board where that first phrase appeared, and here is the second one. — Danielle Kurtzleben]

And remember, remember what he promised: “I’m going to do for the country what I did for my business.”

Well, we should believe him — and make sure he never has the chance to bankrupt America the way he bankrupted his businesses.

So I just want you to take all this information and tell everybody you can. Because people need to make an informed choice. So when Trump says he is for working men and women of America, but Trump Furniture is made in Turkey instead of Lakewood, N.J., that matters. Trump Suits were made in Mexico, instead of Ashland, Pa. Trump Lamps are made in China, not Altoona, Pa.

If he wants to make America great again, maybe he should start by actually making things in America again.

[The Washington Post has documented multiple Trump products that are manufactured overseas. — Sarah McCammon]

That’s not all. Donald Trump actually stood on a debate stage and said Americans’ wages are too high.

He wants to get rid of the federal minimum wage.

[Trump’s stated views on minimum wage have shifted during the campaign. In November, he said he believed U.S. wages were too high. Then in May, on Meet the Press, he said he thought $7.25 per hour was too low of a wage to live on. When host Chuck Todd pressed him on whether there should be a federally set minimum wage, Trump said, “No, I’d rather have the states go out and do what they have to do.” — Danielle Kurtzleben]

His campaign said, let’s sell off America’s assets. Where do we start, the Statue of Liberty? These bad ideas just keep coming.

And he wants to wipe out the tough rules we put on big banks after the financial crisis. He’d rig the economy for Wall Street all over again. So we shouldn’t be surprised. Of course he’d be for protecting a system where the rich and powerful stick it to everybody else. He got rich playing by those rules and he wants to keep it that way.

He says he’s a businessman, and this is what businessmen do.

Well, as CNN has pointed out, no major company in America has filed Chapter 11 more often in the last 30 years than Trump’s casinos.

[Here’s that CNN report. — Sarah McCammon]

So no — this is not normal behavior.

Now look, there are companies in America — men and women who care about their workers and the people they do business with, and want to build something that lasts. They’re decent. They’re honest. Some might even make fine presidents. They would never dream of acting like Donald Trump.

In America, we don’t begrudge people being successful — that’s part of the American dream — but not if they get rich by destroying other people in the process.

So let’s just make sure we don’t put a person like this with his empty promises and his lifetime of selfishness in a position to destroy our lives.

This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans. This goes far beyond that. Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president of the United States.

So we can’t let him roll the dice with our children’s futures.

We need to write a new chapter in the American dream — and it sure cannot be Chapter 11.

So let’s prove that this fall.

We believe in an America that values hard work, treats people with dignity, works to raise your wages, not lower them.

We believe in an America where small businesses are respected, not scammed. I have a plan to make sure big businesses can’t stiff suppliers and contractors like Donald’s been doing for years.

On this beautiful day in this historic city, we believe in an America where people of all religions and races get an equal shot, and our economy works for everyone, not just those at the top.

So let’s carry that message all across America. Let’s fight hard and win in November. And then let’s get to work delivering results for the American people. We are stronger together. Thank you all so much.

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Money is on sale! Come in and enjoy the low, low prices!

On Tuesday, borrowed money got cheaper — and cheaper. For example, Bankrate, a consumer financial services company, started the day by saying lenders were offering 30-year fixed-rate mortgages at an average of just 3.4 percent.

By the end of the day, Zillow’s mortgage rate tracker was showing that the national average had slipped down to 3.27 percent.

And investors around the world were sending the U.S. Treasury this important message: We’ll lend you the cheapest money you’ve ever seen.

The yield on the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note closed below 1.4 percent for the first time on record. It settled at 1.367 percent. Even during the Great Depression, interest rates were never that low on the 10-year Treasury note. You could look it up.

And the 30-year bond’s yield slipped to 2.138 percent, below its record low of 2.226 percent Friday. Incredibly, some analysts are saying the yield may soon fall below 2 percent.

Why such cheap money?

Because following the United Kingdom’s vote on June 23 to exit the European Union, investors have gotten very nervous about the global economy. They want to park their cash someplace safe. And that means investing in government debt issued by safe-looking countries like the U.S., Germany, Switzerland and Sweden. In other words, taxpayers in such countries can get cash at historically low rates.

And the low Treasury rates, in turn, serve as benchmarks for other types of lending rates, like auto loans, home equity loans and credit cards. They even set the tone for mortgage rates.

“The Brexit aftermath left markets rattled throughout last week, driving the continued decline in mortgage rates near all-time historical lows,” Erin Lantz, vice president of mortgages at Zillow, said in a statement.

So if you need to borrow money, this is a good time to do it.

And if you are a saver who lets out a sad sigh when you see your savings account statement — which shows you earned maybe a dime in interest — prepare to get even sadder.

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“Knee-high by the Fourth of July” is an old favorite saying, when you’d drive past a field of corn out in the country. And many of the old favorite varieties, called heirloom corn, have lots of new friends.

In recent years, seed companies have been reporting big sales numbers for these varieties. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Missouri says sales are “skyrocketing” — a fitting verb for the fireworks holiday.

And in Kentucky, two projects are growing up around heirloom corn. One is a new adventure in bourbon distilling, and the other takes place on a hilltop farm in the northern part of the state.

I went to see Jennifer Gleason’s small farm, and on the way I was thinking of some of the colorful heirloom names, such as Painted Mountain Corn, Bloody Butcher and Country Gentleman.

Gleason’s favorite? Hickory King Corn.

A longtime farmer, she’s trying to raise enough food for her family, mostly fruits and vegetables. Fifteen years ago she decided to start growing a grain, and went looking for corn. She was introduced to Hickory King.

“I went to the local hardware store in downtown Maysville … a really old-fashioned one where you had the seeds in bins that you shoveled out and weighed. And it was the only corn that wasn’t pink. All the other corn was coated with a fungicide,” she says.

Gleason now has a corn house where she works with a grain mill, grinding the Hickory King she brings in from the fields. For the home table she makes grits, hominy and corn bread.

“With time I learned it was an open-pollinated heirloom variety best known for making great moonshine, making great hominy. Animals love it as fodder,” she says.

Gleason’s farm is now a tiny factory, called Sunflower Sundries. She makes and sells lot of soap, jars of jam, pickled asparagus, and the Hickory King line which now includes corn chips. They come in 12-ounce bags, which sell well in nearby counties and by mail order. Two local farmers help her grow enough of the corn.

I was pleased to hear Jennifer mention moonshine. Of course, that’s how bourbon got started in the first place, with the Scots-Irish settlers in Appalachia growing corn, adding value by cooking it, distilling it, and transporting the liquor in barrels. And I’d heard that Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, alongside the Kentucky River, has an experimental project underway that uses heirloom corn.

I went to meet Master Distiller Harlen Wheatley and we talked amid the noise and the steam and the sweet aroma of fermenting corn. Buffalo Trace plans to make bourbon from heirloom corn, using a different variety each year. On the morning I visited he was watching over the project’s first selection, harvested last fall, called Boone County White.

“All the grain from the farm, we dried it in a silo and then we brought it in and ground it. It’s been fermented about five days. We’re going to still it today,” Wheatley says.

The company has set aside 18 acres on a farm it’s bought next door, making it easy to keep watch during the season.

“The stuff was 15 feet tall,” Wheatley says. “Some of the ears were 24 inches long. We were pretty excited when we saw the ears, but the problem was there was only one or two per stalk.”

Two ears on each stalk? That’s about right for most corn — it was the 24-inch ear that impressed Wheatley.

As it turned out they had a good enough crop for 117 barrels of bourbon. Now it will take six years to age, the barrels stored away in a warehouse. No one can predict what it might end up tasting like, although the company has grand expectations.

When the proper time comes there will be a taste test. Respectable whiskey writers will get together and sip and decide what’s really in the heirloom corn barrel. The highest rated of all time? That’s Pappy Van Winkle, namesake of the bourbon now produced by Buffalo Trace, scoring 95 out of 100 points.

Amy Preske, the company’s public relations director, says they’re hoping this experiment produces a perfect 100 score.

Preske’s department loves to send out stories about elegantly dressed gentlemen who once made fine whiskey. In this case — the choice of the heirloom variety factors in. Boone County White was said to be a favorite corn of E.H Taylor, who’s often referred to as a “founding father” of the bourbon industry. Buffalo Trace can date its beginnings back to Taylor’s distillery in the late 1800s. That’s job satisfaction for Perske. “We like things that have good history behind them, because that’s basically what marketing is about — it’s telling good stories.”

Taylor’s new bourbon will be ready in 2022, followed in one year by heirloom crop No. 2 — Japonica Striped Corn, which did come from Japan, and has striped leaves, purple tassels, and burgundy kernels.

That corn — here on the Fourth of July — is reported to be 12 inches high.

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Did you know the United Kingdom is one of the most generous countries in the world when it comes to aid for global health and development?

The amount given in 2015 was the equivalent of $18.7 billion in U.S. dollars. That’s second only to the $31.08 billion from the United States. It’s an impressive total given the comparative size of the two countries and their economies.

And the U.K. is one of the few countries that have met the 0.7 percent figure. Back in 1970, the U.N. set a goal for donor countries to aspire to: give 0.7 percent of gross national income for development aid. The U.S., by contrast, is at 0.17 percent.

In sum, the U.K. stands out as a global giver. And now comes Brexit — the June 23 vote to leave the European Union, motivated partly by isolationist and anti-immigrant sentiment. Will Brexit bring about big changes? Before we get to speculation about what might happen, it’s interesting to consider why the U.K. is so benevolent.

The aid often goes to developing countries that were former U.K. colonies. So some global thinkers say it’s a way of staying connected, of atoning for misdeeds during the colonial period, or of influencing politics today. But maybe it’s more than that.

“I think the U.K. has always seen itself as very outward-facing and international in outlook,” says Owen Barder, vice president of the Center for Global Development Europe, “partly because it’s a maritime island nation.” He concedes that many citizens don’t pay much heed to the U.K.’s commitment to aid, but “many are very proud of Britain’s international development program, which is widely regarded as a successful and effective way of projecting Britain’s influence and values.”

Kevin Watkins, executive director of the Overseas Development Institute, adds that the U.K. commitment strengthened because of its leaders in the 2000s: “Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had international development in their DNA. Their vision of Britain was a country out there in the front row in tackling issues like HIV/AIDS.”

But even in the few short weeks since the vote to leave the European Union, there’s already been a dip in the British contribution.

The pound has lost value, dropping by roughly 10 percent against the U.S. dollar. So a pledge made by the U.K. a month ago is now reduced by a tenth. “And that’s not trivial,” says Manoj Mohanan, an assistant professor of public policy and global health at Duke University. He points out that the U.K. allocates around 11 billion pounds, about 14.6 million U.S. dollars, to DFID — its Department for International Development — for efforts to end extreme poverty. The money pays for goods and services for refugee aid, humanitarian aid after a disaster, food supplies and much more. Now that same amount buys a billion pounds less. “That’s a huge hit,” Mohanan says. “Think of the amount of stuff you could do with that money in global health. It’s pretty stunning.”

There’s concern about the chilling effect Brexit could have on potential business investors in the developing world.

The United Kingdom has a tariff-free arrangement with some low- and middle-income countries, including former colonies like Nigeria, explains Owen Barder. For these nations, the preferential trade agreements make the U.K. a valuable market for anything from cut flowers to beans. Now there’s uncertainty about the future of these trade agreements. Even before any changes might occur, the very prospect of a country losing access to the British market “could lead to less investment in those [developing] countries,” he says.

The U.K.’s pending departure from the European Union — and the withdrawal of its contributions — will make a major dent in EU spending on global health, says Mohanan.

Of course, the U.K. could maintain its level of global health spending on its own. Indeed, some of its commitments to global organizations are mandated by U.K. legislation. But with an uncertain economy, “a future government might choose to reverse the legal commitment and not spend that amount of money in aid,” says Barder.

“If you have a significant shift in the House of Commons toward the anti-aid lobby, you could see new legislation introduced that would seek to overturn that 0.7 percent commitment,” says Kevin Watkins. “That would be a consequence that would have very adverse impact on global health financing.”

“A lot of the anxiety right now is we just don’t know,” says Jacqueline Muna Musiitwa. A lawyer and managing partner at the business-focused Hoja Law Group, she’s based in Nigeria. “If it comes to a point where people feel their taxes are being increased [to provide aid to] others across the world, I think there might be a negative effect on policy.”

The Brexit vote could have an impact beyond aid as well. The idea of seceding from the EU could be an inspiration to countries in Africa, says Musiitwa. There are a number of regional blocs in Africa, like the East African Community and the Economic Community of Central African States. “The precedent that Brexit has set is not good, especially if powerful countries view [secession] as an option,” she says. “The reason regional blocs work is there are a few strong countries that help hold up the rest.” An exit by key players, she fears, would wipe out the benefits for smaller countries when it comes to negotiating trade terms, for example, or collaborating on health issues.

The secession precedent also worries those who look at countries like Nigeria, where the region of Biafra has been making noises about seceding. The hope is that Brexit will not inspire regions to “threaten to secede,” says Musiitwa — and turn to violence if the government says no to secession.

Of course, Brexit could swing things in a positive way. The U.K. will have “more freedom to provide more aid directly to countries it chooses,” says Dapo Oyewole, director of the Policy Development Network and an Aspen fellow, instead of following the EU priorities. Perhaps the fact that residents of EU nations will no longer have easy access to jobs in the U.K. will open up more jobs for residents of countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, whose members include developing nations that were once British colonies and are English-speaking.

“That might be a silver lining,” says Oyewole, who is from Nigeria and has lived in both his homeland and the U.K. over the past 20 years.

But he sees a potentially unsettling scenario as well: “If you look at the level of hate crimes in the U.K. since Brexit, there’s been quite a lot. People from developing regions, particularly people of a particular race, don’t know if they may be harassed or intimidated. Like everybody is saying, no one knows what’s going to happen.”

In his view, “more fingers are pointing in a negative direction than a positive direction.” Even the remittances sent home by immigrants are worth less: “The pound was so strong that sending money to any country will make quite an impact. With the value of the pound reducing, it makes it more difficult for immigrants in the U.K. to send the same amount of money they were sending all along.”

And yet Brexit reflects the vote of the people, points out Musiitwa: “We may not like the results, but the people have made this choice.”

And therein lies a lesson for the developing world, she says: “Maybe someday we will get to a point where it’s OK if we disagree, and we may not like the outcome of a vote, but we have strong enough institutions to follow through and execute what the people want.”

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